“This
book is about saving America
and returning her to her original promise, her original founding ideas and
ideals. It is about planting, nurturing, and growing a sustainable middle
class… This 21st C. definitionof freedom is expressed as self-determination—the opportunity that comes
from one’s own hands and one’s own bold ideas connected to action, personal
risk, personal investment, and hard work.

This
book is about creating a new, sustainable business plan that returns this
country to its original big, bold, audacious dream… This idea is both utterly
liberal and the very definition of conservative at the same time.”

Excerpted
from the Introduction (page 7)

It’s no secret that,
by most measures, black folks are the only ethnic group that’s far worse off
than it was before Barack Obama took office. Whether you’re talking home
ownership, unemployment, high school graduation, wages, access to healthcare,
net worth, retirement savings, college attendance, financial aid or consumer
debt, African-Americans have experienced a dispiriting downward mobility. So
much for hope and change.

Rather than risk offending the Obamapologists
permit me to quickly add that stonewalling Republicans in congress are as much
to blame for the skyrocketing black misery index. Nevertheless, not to worry.
Before you plunge into the depths of despair, I have good news to report.

For a man has arrived
with an answer for the crisis in John Hope Bryant, with an emphasis on Hope.
Mr. Bryant, who is the Chairman of the President’s Advisory Council on
Financial Capability, has written a self-help book with the controversial
title: How the Poor Can Save Capitalism. He is also the co-founder of the
Gallup HOPE Index, the only national opinion poll which measures the financial
dignity and economic energy of America’s
youth.

The focus of his
timely tome, however, is giving impoverished people a helping hand. His plan
might be thought of as akin to the micro-finance model implanted around the
world by Nobel Peace Prize-winner
Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Mr. Bryant see the woes of
those stuck in cycles of poverty as having as much to do with self-esteem,
depression and values as being broke and/or jobless.

And the solution he
envisions is what he terms the fifth “big bang,” namely, “the unleashing of
empowered human capital.” The goal under this theory is for each individual to
become “the CEO on you.” Weighing in a little heavier on pep talks than
practical solutions, the opus struck me like an extended motivational speech
offering little more than “hope” to gullible ghetto dwellers still waiting for
the change promised way back in 2008.

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KamWilliams.com

The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.